Yitzhak Shamir

Yitzhak Shamir (22 October 1915-30 June 2012) was Prime Minister of Israel from 10 October 1983 to 13 October 1984 (succeeding Menachem Begin and preceding Shimon Peres) and from 20 October 1986 to 13 July 1992 (succeeding Peres and preceding Yitzhak Rabin). He was a member of Likud.

Biography
Yitzhak Yezernitzky was born in Ruzhany, Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ruzhinoy, Belarus) in 1915. He became a radical Zionist, studying at Warsaw Univeristy. He emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935, where he finished his degree at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He joined the Irgun in 1936, though in 1940 he attached himself to its more radical and militant breakaway group, Lehi. Captured twice by the British, he escaped each time, finally finding political asylum in France before returning to the newly established state of Israel in 1948. After an initial unsuccessful attempt to enter the Knesset in 1949, he became a businessman, a period interrupted by work for Israel's secret service, Mossad, from 1955 to 1965. Having left business, he began to work for Menachem Begin's conservative Herut party in 1970, and represented it in the Knesset from 1973. His loyalty to Begin was severely tested, as he opposed the Camp David Accords, which involved the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the Sinai Peninsula. Nevertheless, as Foreign Minister from 1980 he supervised the implementation of the agreement, while supporting the formal annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981. As Prime Minister, he was unable to achieve major legislation, as from 1984 he depended upon the fragile support of the Israeli Labor Party. Nevertheless, he continued to encourage Jewish settlement in the West Bank, while constantly frustrating efforts by the United States to find a compromise peace solution for the Middle East. He left the premiership in 1992, and he died in 2012.